A boy in England has received the first organ transplant that will grow inside the patient's body using their own stem cells. (Source: PA)

The era of replaceable organs is drawing near

Mankind
is close to defying nature and extending human beings' life spans
tens of years by using replacement organs. The key to this
progress is stem
cells, the same kind of cells that differentiated to form your
original tissues.

In England, a 10-year-old boy received
a groundbreaking
tracheal transplant at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in
London. The windpipe -- a flexible tube that connects the nose,
mouth and lungs -- was replaced with an organ that will grow inside
the boy's own body using the boy's own stem cells.

The story
began when the boy was born with long segment tracheal stenosis, a
debilitating condition that leaves the victim with a 1 mm wide
airway, which can lead to suffocation and death. Doctors tried
to treat the condition with stents, but the stents collapsed, cutting
off the boy's airflow and damaging his aorta. After the boy
almost stopped breathing, his doctors contacted Paolo Macchiarini,
from Careggi University Hospital, Florence.

Macchiarini
decided to try an ambitious and risky approach that had never before
been successfully performed -- regrowing the organ in the boy's own
body using stem cells. Leading a Italian, British and Spanish
team, the researchers first took a donor windpipe and stripped
it of all cells to prevent immune response.

The
procedure has begun with a successful implant. Seeded with the
boy's stem cells and a cocktail of growth-promoting chemicals, the
tissue was implanted into the boy last Week. The boy responded
well, breathing normally and speaking soon after the
operation.

Professor Martin Birchall, head of translational
regenerative medicine at University College London called the
procedure a "milestone moment" and pointed out that by
allowing the boy's own cells to regrow the tissue, the cost was
dramatically lowered to "tens of thousands pounds rather than
hundreds of thousands."

He states, "We
believe it’s a real milestone. It is the first time a child
has received stem-cell organ treatment, and it’s the longest airway
that has ever been replaced. I think the technique will allow not
just highly specialized hospitals to carry out stem-cell organ
transplants. We don’t think it’s going to replace conventional
transplants just yet, but already there are certain aspects of
conventional transplant surgery it can be applied to. We need to
think about how to make regenerative medicine a key part of our
healthcare."

The work follows other significant work two
years ago in Spain where Claudia Castillo, 30, became the first
person to receive a portion of trachea regrown with stem cells.
That transplant, however, was a much shorter tract of trachea and was
much more expensive as it was grown outside the body in a special
bioreactor.

The researchers are looking forward to advancing
the treatment aggressively, perhaps next performing larynx or
oesophagus stem cell transplants.

Despite this optimism, it
still remains to be seen whether the boy's recovery is as successful
as anticipated. Given Castillo's success, though, the boy is
expected to make a full recovery. And with that recovery
mankind will move one
step closer to immortality.

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